THE DEVIL IN AMERICA, one of Kai Ashante Williams's deep & disturbing novellas

THE DEVIL IN AMERICA
KAI ASHANTE WILSON
Tor.com free online or 99¢ Kindle edition

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Scant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.

My Review: This 2014 novelette by the author of A Taste of Honey and The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps was nominated for a Nebula Award, a Locus Award, a Shirley Jackson Award, and a World Fantasy Award. I see why. What isn't as readily imaginable is why it didn't sweep them all...

Ma’am might be a challenge to love sometimes, but respect came easy.
–and–
He was a father who loved his daughter, but he was a husband first and foremost. I’m a terrible thirsty man, Pa had said once, and your mama is my only cool glass of water in this world.

Tell me that this isn't top-quality phrasemaking, beautifully economical characterization, pitch-perfect explication of the story's reality.

Easter, the belovèd daughter and last child of Wilbur and Hazel Mae, is twelve. She knows so much and still so little about the world. She is a prime target for the Others, the unseen ones she calls angels:

‘The Devil’ in Africa had been capricious, a trickster, and if cruel, only insomuch as bored young children, amoral and at loose ends, may be cruel: seeking merely to provoke an interesting event at any cost, to cause some disruption of the tedious status quo. For the Devil in America, however, malice itself was the end, and temptation a means only to destroy.

"The Devil" has agents or thralls or subjects, how would I know being the materialist meat-sack I am, but Easter knows:

And this whirligig thing’um, right here, was exactly what kept all the angels hereabouts leashed, year after year, to chase away pests, bring up water from deep underground when too little rain fell, or dry the extra drops in thin air when it rained too much.

When Easter listens to these angels, poor little lamb, she causes havoc on a scale her life is too short to know represents the normal state of humanity, that is to say struggle and striving. But the little love is so sorry for her mistake that she takes on a debt that can never be repaid. And that is when the world starts to set her up for the worst fall. Ma'am, she knows what "The Devil" is all about and she does what she can to make her Easter aware that something you don't, can't, comprehend fully is always the source of your troubles in life:

Ma’am. The white man’s gonna see that colored man can’t count, Ma’am, and cheat him out of all his money.

That’s right he is, Easter! And I promise you it ain’t no other outcome! Walk up in that bank just as rich as you please—but you gon’ walk out with no shoes, and owing the shirt on your back! Old Africa magic’s the same way, but worse, Easter, cause it ain’t money we got, me and you—all my babies had—and my own mama, and the grandfather they brung over on the slave ship. It’s life. It’s life and death, not money. Not play-stuff. But, listen here—we don’t know our numbers no more, Easter. See what I’m saying? That oldtime wisdom from over there, what we used to know in the Africa land, is all gone now. And, Easter, you just can’t walk up into the spirits’ bank not knowing your numbers. You rich, girl. You got gold in your pockets, and I know it’s burning a hole. I know cause it burnt me, it burnt your brother. But I pray you listen to me, baby child, when I say—you walk up in that bank, they gon’ take a heap whole lot more than just your money.

And take the payment Easter owes he does, this fine vile Devil we made for ourselves. The end of all good things seems to be slaughter, murder, lynching cruelty...and the pious and the safe say Never again...this time we mean it...never again.

Or next time...maybe the one after that.

But no, there's always a next time and never a never again. We don't learn because it wouldn't be near as much fun if we couldn't kill an anymore.

So Humanity goes on its violent, vile way, down and down.

Pay your buck or just go read the story on Tor.com. Either way you'll come away sure that Humanity (racist white "humanity" most especially) isn't pretty and maybe it's a good thing our time as "masters" is nearly done.